A couple times a week, Nancy O’Regan or one of her fellow volunteers makes a trip to the Guysborough hardware store.
Today, her mission is to pick up four cans of primer and paint in a neutral beige with a creamy eggshell finish.
It’s all for a renovation at a six-unit building just bought in February by the Community First Guysborough County Housing Association. The building is in Boylston, N.S., a rural area about 270 kilometres from Halifax. O’Regan is chair of the board.
“It was pretty exciting,” she said of the purchase, which came about six months after the organization officially incorporated.
“We were successful against all odds.”
Community First is now the proud landlord for seven people, offering stable rents at between $800 and $850 a month for one- and two-bedroom apartments — about 60 to 70 per cent of what market rent would be.
As Nova Scotia grapples with a shortage of tens of thousands of homes, non-profits are trying to shoulder the load of housing people who’ve been priced out of the private market. But the high cost of managing their properties means organizations must balance the number of affordable units they offer against long-term sustainability.
That’s especially challenging for small organizations like Community First, which are depending on volunteers to keep everything running.
“I worry about board member burnout,” O’Regan said.
Without those organizers, meeting the goal of increasing the availability of low-cost housing in her area might not be possible, she said.
Sleepless nights over money
Community First incorporated in July 2024 because of the deep need for housing in the Guysborough area, which was short at least 300 homes in 2022, according to a provincial needs assessment. That’s in an area with a population of roughly 4,600 people.
Technically, O’Regan is retired from her job in community development. So are many of the 13 other volunteers on the organization’s board.
There’s no money for the organization to hire an executive director, or even a property manager. Instead, the volunteers take on that work. It’s a situation O’Regan said is “not sustainable.”
In fact, the lack of money for organizational costs almost tanked the deal on the Boylston building.
“We had some sleepless nights,” she said, recalling a moment when the board realized it needed to find money for an environmental assessment that had to be done before the sale.
“I said, if push comes to shove … I’d pull out my credit card,” she said. “And the rest of the board members said, ‘We’re not there yet.'”
Non-profits and volunteer groups are trying to shoulder the load of housing people who’ve been priced out of the private market. But the high cost of managing their properties means organizations must balance the number of low-cost units they offer against long-term sustainability. Shaina Luck reports.
Long-term sustainability
In the last few years, there’s been widespread interest in affordable or non-market housing, and different levels of governments have created programs to help non-profits buy or build homes.
In communities across the country, similar groups are stepping in to try to meet the need for affordable housing.
But once the non-profits become property owners, long-term financial sustainability is largely up to them.
And because non-profits deliberately charge less rent than private landlords, this leaves them with less cash to maintain and grow their organizations.
To deal with that, some non-profits choose to charge market rent for some of their units, which subsidizes the low rent in the remaining units.
Others opt to make up the difference with labour-intensive fundraising.
O’Regan is concerned about this choice; she’s worried it might threaten how long Community First can keep going.
The organization is currently looking for loans to build more units, so the choice will have to be made soon, O’Regan said.
“This is a decision our board is going to be faced with, you know, within the next half year.”
A pivotal expansion
The same decision is facing the volunteer board of the Antigonish Affordable Housing Society.
The AAHS already operates 28 units with rents between $640 and $938 a month, utilities included. It houses families and seniors who are unable to afford anywhere else in the competitive university town.
But paying the mortgage and the operations costs the AAHS roughly $1,000 a month per unit.
“Our operation is not breaking even with the rental income that we have,” said Colleen Cameron, the AAHS board chair.
“So, that’s being supplemented through fundraising and grants.”
The society is looking forward to opening 17 brand new units on Aug. 1, which will range in rent from between $911 for a one-bedroom to $1,350 for a three-bedroom. Some new two-bedroom townhomes in the area are advertised at upwards of $2,595 a month.
Those new units are pivotal, because operating costs like snow removal, maintenance, and property taxes will be split between more apartments.
“We’re hoping to break even because we’re at that level of scale. But our goal is to break even, which is not leaving us any other room or contingencies,” Cameron said in a recent interview.
“Sustainably, we have to think longer term in the future.”
The AAHS board members say their construction costs have ballooned from approximately $200 per square foot to $400 per square foot over the last 10 years.
They made a decision in mid-May that their next development must charge a higher rent on some of the units in order to subsidize the rest.
Cameron said it was a decision the board has been “struggling” with for more than a year.
“We cannot build affordable housing and be sustainable without having market rents included. It’s just not working out,” she said.
“We’ve been working at this for over 10 years, and the writing’s on the wall; we have to consider doing a mix and that would be to help support affordable [units] by charging some market rents.”
The mixed-income model
Like all building owners, non-profits are dealing with increasing costs like insurance, electricity, and construction materials, said Trish McCourt, the executive director of the Nova Scotia Non-Profit Housing Association.
“Non-profits really don’t have any access to anything less expensive than private development does,” she told CBC News. “And in some cases, it costs them more because they’re not as scalable.”
Dealing with those costs by charging market rents on some units to subsidize others is called the “mixed-income” model.
McCourt said that can lead to healthy neighbourhoods for families of all income levels.
“If we build neighbourhoods that are accommodating everyone in the community and what their needs are, it’s just better for everyone,” she said.
“But it will also be better for that development if they’re able to count on having some people come in at higher levels of rent.”
However, under the mixed-income model it takes longer to gather all the affordable units an organization needs. She said that’s why some organizations make the “absolutely valid” choice to go a different way.
“I understand why some are going to continue to be dedicated to only offering affordable rents, but they will also need to do a lot of other fundraising in order to make that happen,” she said.
50-50 split between affordable, market
With 295 apartments in the Halifax-Dartmouth area, the Housing Trust of Nova Scotia is one of the largest non-profits in the province.
The Trust bought the apartments in 2022 and began extensive renovations while keeping the tenants in place. They do not do renovictions, said executive director Angela Bishop.
Right now, about 70 per cent of their units cost either $750 a month for a one-bedroom or $860 for two bedrooms.
However, the Trust’s operating expenses can be at least $400 per unit a month, plus a monthly mortgage Bishop said is even more costly.
“As interest rates drop, and we’re able to refinance at better rates, the picture improves every single day,” Bishop said.
“But in the meantime, it’s the case that those lower [priced] units, if you take them, isolate them just on their own, they do. indeed, lose money.”
To compensate for this, the trust has increased prices on some units as tenants move out.
About 30 per cent of the units cost $1,350 for a one-bedroom and $1,600 for a two-bedroom, which is below the average market rate of $1,707 for a Halifax two-bedroom, listed by the CMHC last fall.
“We kind of take an overall look at the buildings,” said Bishop. “That’s why we want that mixed income model, so we can continue to support people who can only afford to pay $750 a month rent.”
The goal for the trust is to have 50 per cent affordable units and 50 per cent market units.
Bishop said they hope this will leave money to buy more buildings from the private sector and convert them to non-profit status.
The federal government has promised to make nearly 3.9 million homes available by 2031. Andrew Chang explains why bringing prices down is so fraught, and how addressing the housing crisis might require a radical shift in how we view home ownership.
‘I’m not making a brownie to create housing for people’
Back in Guysborough County, Community First is planning to build another six units on the vacant land beside its Boylston building.
If the board charged market rent on a few of them it would have more income; other landlords in the Guysborough area are renting for as much as $1,400.
But O’Regan is not sold yet on the mixed-income model.
“I’m concerned about it because I know we need a lot of affordable housing,” O’Regan said.
“It means that we have more money in our operating costs, but it’s going to take us so much longer to get there if we have to do that.”
Still, she can’t see her board fundraising to make up the difference. They’re volunteers who are already working full tilt, and adding more to their duties seems unreasonable.
“I’m not making a brownie to create housing for people,” she said.
The board is exploring all kinds of options for community investment, and O’Regan said she’s keeping an open mind on all of them.
But she also has a sense that time is short.
“We’re going to need to be making those decisions, I’d say, within the next six months,” she said.
